wars, spaces and bodies

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A map that blogs

I described a series of maps of the violence in Syria a few weeks ago, and today Al Jazeeraprovided a new interactive that maps the different groups that compose the Syrian opposition; here’s a screenshot of what is, of evident necessity, a rough-and-ready approximation of a fluid situation:

And since I recently mentioned Riverbend‘s blog from Baghdad during the US-led occupation, I thought I should list some of the blogs being written out of Syria. I do this with trepidation, after the odious fiasco of the Gay Girl in Damascus blog, which turned out not only to be written by an American man but also to describe the ‘arrest’ of its ‘author’, ‘Amina Haraf’: several of the bloggers I list below (like Razzan Ghazawi) really have been arrested, interrogated or expelled. If I’ve overlooked any other insightful blogs from Syria, please let me know.

Free Halab (‘a blog about the Syrian Revolution’) includes reports from Aleppo, Homs and Damascus (including video, and some helpful maps of the situation in different cities by Cedric Labrousse); other posts from Homs are here (and an excellent discussion of them and their author here), and from Northern Syria here.

Maysaloon is here – singled out with good reason in the Guardian – and Razzan Ghazawi‘s (according to the Telegraph ‘iconic‘) blog is here. It includes this powerful poem, The Revolutionary Cannot Speak (and I suspect the Telegraph could not read it either); it also might explain the otherwise strange title I’ve given this post.

We were taught that the sun does not always shineWe were taughtThousands mirrors worth a truthful face

We tried to unlearn, those many lines our memory cannot forsakeThe revolution, we repeated, the revolution is the solutionA task we may never undertake

Our revolution is pure, and it is not WhiteIt’s grounded and rooted in our sinful eyes

We are the peopleWe are the words of wisdomYour books and think-tanks so eloquently did not foresee

The power lies in peopleThe Black Palestinian painfully teaches us

Why do I feel that I’ll soon be the last Syrian alive40, 000 corpses can never lieThey lay underneath our sacred soilThey haunt us in protestsOccupy our bannersand online profiles

A burden I cannot bearSo like others, I long for the day I join the Shuhada

I cannot be the last Syrian aliveI cannot be the Syrian who left, and still alive

You think “critically” of our raw revolution, you sayYou think and cite our savagery with references of youtube videosYou are as powerful as the states you opposeStates silence us with machine gunsThey send us sleepless killers in black suitsStates fight among each otherWe have learned the drill

But you, like the White, speak on behalf of usYou are the intellectual whose privileged voice silenced our indigenous voicesYou’re no friend of mineThe leftist, feminist and the pro Palestinian activistAre names of spaces you proudly occupyTo me, they’re just another privileged classYou made it possible to become my enemy

Yes, I have said the word “enemy”And I would say it in the class you teachBelow the many articles you publishWhere you could tell the world how my struggle isn’t consistent with yours

What is your struggle, I wonderWhen you’re the diasporic subject and I am the postcolonialI stand in front of systems, machines and propagandaIn my besieged land

Your battle has become my dream of freedomYour intellect has become another bullet in my chestA “friendly fire,” I do not call it

I am being silenced by your pen

The revolutionary cannot speakShe may never speak for years to comeShe writes in her mother tongueSpeaks folky words and songs your memory can no longer graspThe revolutionary speaks to her gender-less comradesAnd youThe powerful male intellectualYou are not one.